The most dramatic change is in the number of out of wedlock births. However, since these were falling at the same rate as in wedlock births the percent of births which were out of wedlock remained nearly unchanged. The peak for out of wedlock birth rates was in 2009 at 41%, and this dropped down to 40.6% in 2013.

But the overall number masks what is going on by age and race. Since 2007 out of wedlock birth rates have fallen for women under 30, have remained roughly flat for women 30-34, and increased for women 35 and over:

Out of wedlock birth rates have fallen the most for Hispanics, and to a lesser degree for Blacks. White and Asian out of wedlock birth rates have declined slightly as well.

Out of wedlock births are now more likely to involve cohabiting parents than in the recent past:

Dalrock, can you trust the data from the government? I’m finding it harder and harder to do. LUPO – lying until proven otherwise.

I’m inclined to believe it unless it is challenged. There are still plenty of academics who would be in a position to challenge bogus data, and I don’t see this as an important political issue. Americans aren’t really bothered by out of wedlock birth rates; high out of wedlock birth rates are the new normal.

Great stuff Dalrock. It is logical to see a decline in out of wedlock births; the overall fertility rate is on the decline. What will be interesting is the percentage of cohabiting parents over time. Given the downturn in marriage that number should continue to trend upwards.

The problem is there isn’t a policy which I see that we can point to as having caused the leveling off, so doing more of what is working is a problem. The recession seems like the most likely cause, so I guess we could credit Obama/Obamacare, etc.

Interesting. Does the decrease in real numbers result from an uptick in chastity, an increase in scrupulous contraceptive use, an increase in abortion (other statistics suggest the number of abortions is down), or lower fertility among the sexually active? It’s also possible that more people are choosing to engage in practices that do not result in pregnancy (cue da GBFM).

The problem is there isn’t a policy which I see that we can point to as having caused the leveling off, so doing more of what is working is a problem.

Right, because in reality nothing is working. Our b@stardy rate is still an epic disaster. All that has happened is the rain stopped. The flood waters have not receeded.

The recession seems like the most likely cause, so I guess we could credit Obama/Obamacare, etc.

So (roughly) 39% of ALL children born in the United States are born b@stards. If you discount the 39.1% (or whatever it was in 2009) the 39% b@stardy rate is the highest it has ever been in US history. And it has been that way for all of POTUS Obama’s administration. I’m not going to blame the president for this, nor will I give him credit for fixing anything since it is still broken (far worse off than when he took over.) Its just levelled off is all….

….really, the only thing that could fix this rate and start bringing it down where it belongs (low single digits) is marriage. That is it. If we propose that people will continue to have s-x and we further propose that women will continue to forget taking that little pill and men will continue to not wear condoms, baring sterlization, marriage is the only way to prevent children from being born illegitimate.

McMegan’s post yesterday, she kept harping on the fact the the poor… they don’t marry. Instead of asking the question as to why they don’t marry, she was arguing what government should be doing (if anything) to prevent poverty among our steady 39% b@stardy rate. No one is really talking about what must be done to get that number smaller.

I guess if you refuse to even have a conversation about reversing the trend of higher and higher illegitimacy numbers, then getting the rate to at least stop increasing is seen as some kind of… victory?

I just have to laugh when I see that 50% of pregnancies to cohabitating couples are “unintended”. Perhaps unintended by him, but in this age of easy contraceptives, hardly unintended by her.

I wondered the same thing when I looked at that. There was a clear trend towards OOW births in cohabitation, which would seem to fit with a fear of having a fatherless child during difficult times. At the same time, the oops factor increased amongst cohabiting OOW births.

I just have to laugh when I see that 50% of pregnancies to cohabitating couples are “unintended”. Perhaps unintended by him, but in this age of easy contraceptives, hardly unintended by her.

You are right. Hardly unintended by her.

Another birth percentage we should be looking at is the percentage of children born IN wedlock where the parents have been married 8 months or less. Do they track this frighteningly obvious marital motivational data? Perhaps what is unintended by him was entirely intentional on her part to get him to marry her so that their child will not be a statistic.

It used to be, people actually waited to get married before even beginning to try and have children. NOW the belief (no matter how wicked and backwards) tends to be that if there IS a wedding, it is only because there MUST be (not that they MAY be.)

Could also be that the money is running dry. Women can choose whether to have the child or not, they can also choose to be rather rigourous with what contraceptive they use if they have to. If they sense that the pay out isn’t what it was a few years ago, they will decide it’s not worth the hassle.

Bradford: “I just have to laugh when I see that 50% of pregnancies to cohabitating couples are “unintended”. Perhaps unintended by him, but in this age of easy contraceptives, hardly unintended by her”

Dalrock: “I wondered the same thing when I looked at that. There was a clear trend towards OOW births in cohabitation, which would seem to fit with a fear of having a fatherless child during difficult times. At the same time, the oops factor increased amongst cohabiting OOW births.”
_____________________________________

There’s an increase in cohabiting couples overall who then have at least one OOW child. Men still want to have sex, women still want to be mothers. From what I can see, the only things changing are fewer children being born, and fewer marriages.

I’m not sure that the cited data in the OP stands for this conclusion, but from my observation, more people are willing to live together indefinitely without being married. And people are more willing to have children together without being married. This has been slowly changing over time and I suspect that there’s data to bear this out. I think that this is because people want to be able to leave a relationship without much hassle, if it comes to that. I also speculate it’s because women still want kids and will do pretty much what they must to keep the father around. If that means forgoing the legalities and formalities of marriage, I suspect a lot more women are willing to do that if it will entice her baby daddy to stay with her.

Again, I don’t have any personal experience here with these shotgun-ish wedding systems. I have a relative (by marriage) who got married not because he wanted to, but because he had to (if you know what I mean.) But of the 12 weddings I’ve been to over the last 15 years, 11 of those couples are still married and none of the wives had any babies baking in the oven at the time of nuptuals.

I’m not sure that the cited data in the OP stands for this conclusion, but from my observation, more people are willing to live together indefinitely without being married. And people are more willing to have children together without being married. This has been slowly changing over time and I suspect that there’s data to bear this out. I think that this is because people want to be able to leave a relationship without much hassle, if it comes to that. I also speculate it’s because women still want kids and will do pretty much what they must to keep the father around. If that means forgoing the legalities and formalities of marriage, I suspect a lot more women are willing to do that if it will entice her baby daddy to stay with her.

It is the above scenario which motivate the pastor Driscolls of the world to create a shaming youtube of him getting all red faced and screaming “HOW DARE YOU!!!!” In Driscoll’s worldview, this makes perfect sense: because she is living with him, of course she wants to be married but he just wants to have s-x without legal and financial commitment to her. And since she wants to be with him under any circumstances, if it is not marriage, then this is the next best thing for her. That is the only thing Driscoll sees.

In reality, I’m of the opinion the main reason why men just live with women (but don’t marry them) is financial: they want to pool money and save on their combined living expenses while at the same time, they don’t want to have any alimony responsibilities to her if she (or he) should decide to terminate their relationship. For women? I suspect it is almost entirely about her saving money she was already spending. More often than not, she is living with him at his place that he had long before she came into the picture. She just “moved in” after the fact.

I think women cohabit because they want the commitment. If they can’t have marriage, then they’ll take the next best thing, which is living together. At least then she knows that his home, where he usually hangs his hat, is with her. They also pool expenses which ties him to her. If they have a kid together , so much the better to continue to tie him to her. I’m not saying she’s being sinister or conniving about it. I’m saying if she’s found a guy she likes well enough to want to be with him for more than a few months, she’s likely to settle for living with him if he is adamant against marriage.

I think men cohabit because they are scared of marriage, and rightly so. They want to be able to get out on a moment’s notice if need be, and minimize their legal entanglements. But they still want a steady supply of cheap and plentiful sex, and the best way to get that is a regular woman. If he won’t marry her, he can live with her, and pool expenses while being able to keep close tabs on her. If it goes south, he can bail out fast.

This stood out to me; ‘Since 2007 out of wedlock birth rates have fallen for women under 30, have remained roughly flat for women 30-34, and increased for women 35 and over:’

Could this be showing the progress of the ‘opportunity bubble’ to have OOW children moving along over time?

In other words. the cohort of women over 35 can still find men to father children (either willingly or not), but for younger cohorts of women, this is proving increasingly difficult.

If so, it is hard to say what is driving this, but perhaps it’s a combination of unleashed hypergamy pushing women to have unrealistic expectations, and ever greater numbers of men joining the sexodus (either consciously or not).

It used to be, people actually waited to get married before even beginning to try and have children. NOW the belief (no matter how wicked and backwards) tends to be that if there IS a wedding, it is only because there MUST be (not that they MAY be.)

During our engagement my wife was asked if she was pregnant many times by various women, who were generally disappointed to find she wasn’t, then gleefully predicted she would be soon (AKA before the wedding). Quite an interesting glimpse into the bitter world of hateful bitches.

It used to be, people actually waited to get married before even beginning to try and have children. NOW the belief (no matter how wicked and backwards) tends to be that if there IS a wedding, it is only because there MUST be (not that they MAY be.)

During our engagement my wife was asked if she was pregnant many times by various women, who were generally disappointed to find she wasn’t, then gleefully predicted she would be soon (AKA before the wedding).

Not that surprising, and that is sad.

Quite an interesting glimpse into the bitter world of hateful bitches.

Possibly. Or (worse) perhaps it is an interesting glimpse into the bitter world of ordinary people understanding (either correctly or incorrectly) that of course (given secular laws writen the way they are on marriage), there is nothing in it for men to get married or even engaged if she wasn’t already pregnant OR promised on her part to have lots of s-x with her “husband-to-be” provided he gave her a diamond, first. Either way, this is a dark and sinister world.

I had the same thought. As the economy gets worse the women rationally understand that having the child and then the responsibility of raising the child without any meaningful child support is not a good deal. In a good economy under the current legal regime it’s a target rich environment. With the current economy, they’re getting few and far between. If this is the case and women are making rational economic decisions to have a baby based on what they can extract from the baby daddy, it’s a real indictment of the real nature of women.

Says not only has the out of wedlock birthrate hit 48% for the first time, but also – ” Calling it “The Great Crossover,” a report by academics and social activists shows that for the first time in history the median age of American women having babies is lower than the median age of marriage – 25.7 and 26.5, respectively.”

It appears, that as in the climate wars, someone has their finger on the data (ie – lowering past temps to try to get us to believe that we are living in unprecedented warmer times).

Here in the rural South, young couples with modest incomes often CHOOSE to have children OOW in order that EACH can claim one of the children as a dependent, thus enabling BOTH of them to file taxes as Head of Household and get the lowest possible tax rate. Also, if either of them has an income of less than $28,000 or so (very common around here) and claims one or more children, then the federal government has a program in a lot of counties which allows them to build a brand new house with two bathrooms and up to five bedrooms on up to 2 1/2 acres of land. If the couple married, their incomes would be combined for the purpose of determining eligibility for the house-building program, and neither would qualify. But if they stay “single” until the house is built and the mortgage is created, then they are in the clear.

Back in the 70s, OOW pregnancies were a disaster — now they are part of a long-range strategy.

Deti – “There’s an increase in cohabiting couples overall who then have at least one OOW child. Men still want to have sex, women still want to be mothers. From what I can see, the only things changing are fewer children being born, and fewer marriages. ”

Maybe Denmark is a precursor to the future?

“While co-habitation is also in some cases a permanent alternative to marriage, there is a tendency that co-habitation is followed by marriage. As Ottosen (2000) has shown in her study of cohabitation and marriage in Denmark, marriage is considerably more unusual amongst first-time parents than it is among couples that are bringing up their second child together. Most young people choose to establish themselves and have their first child before they tie the knot (Ottosen 2000). According to Ottosen, marriage amongst young people today should therefore not so much be regarded as a separate life-stage, but the consolidated end of a continuum starting with co-habitation.”

Says not only has the out of wedlock birthrate hit 48% for the first time

That is 9 horrifying percentage points higher than Dalrock’s numbers…

but also – ” Calling it “The Great Crossover,” a report by academics and social activists shows that for the first time in history the median age of American women having babies is lower than the median age of marriage – 25.7 and 26.5, respectively.”

The great crossover is right. It coincides with another “great” crossover, this time two years ago where the number of people in this country who got government benefits exceeded the number of people who paid them. Just disgusting.

Perhaps that slight downward trend in births OOW are men waking up to the scam presented to them.

Granted I don’t expect a lionshare of men to give up easy sex…but surely some of them are realizing that there are women out there just wanting the sex to have a kid. And the child support laws are millstones around their neck.

Both, I think. One woman said something to the effect of “oh, you’re one of those old-fashioned women.” I think part of the hostility from other women came from my wife basically admitting that getting pregnant in this day and age is a choice and not an “oops.” A woman admitting that she’s choosing to NOT get pregnant before marriage shines a spotlight on the shady intents of other women. It’s a similar idea to the sexy/slutty modesty line that women try to approach but not cross, as Rollo has written about… those approaching the line are hostile toward modest women.

The Herd tries to make everyone run in the same direction. Dissenters will be trampled.

There are presently 41 different types of contraception available for women, for men there are only 2 – vasectomy or a condom – your only line of defense against her ‘choice’. The only thing separating a man from a lifetime (not just 18 years) of interacting with the decider of altering the course of his life is a thin layer of latex.

Iron Rule of Tomassi #5NEVER allow a woman to be in control of the birth.

Always have protection. I’ve had far too many guys hit me with the argument that they implicitly trust their girlfriends to be on the pill or whatever, and that she “doesn’t want kids” only to be an unprepared Daddy 9 month later after ‘the accident’. The only accident they had was not being in control of the birth themselves. In fact I’d argue that men need to use extra caution when in an LTR since the ease of getting too relaxed with her is present.

Accidental pregnancy is practically a cottage industry now. For a woman without education (or even with) and without means, an ‘unplanned’ pregnancy may be a pretty good prospect, especially when every law and social expectation weighs in her favor. These are Professional Mommies. When I counseld in Reno I knew a guy who married this woman who had 3 children from 2 Fathers who he himself had impregnated with her 4th. She was a Professional Mother.

Says not only has the out of wedlock birthrate hit 48% for the first time, but also – ” Calling it “The Great Crossover,” a report by academics and social activists shows that for the first time in history the median age of American women having babies is lower than the median age of marriage – 25.7 and 26.5, respectively.”

It appears, that as in the climate wars, someone has their finger on the data (ie – lowering past temps to try to get us to believe that we are living in unprecedented warmer times).

I think it is more likely different data sets and different conclusions/headlines. The 48% figure is for first births, while the 40.6% figure is for all births. This would suggest that married women have more children, which isn’t difficult to imagine. But it is interesting that just prior to this census report (in Aug of 2014) we had a fairly steady beat of the claim that Millennials don’t believe in marriage. In June of 2014 Slate ran an article with the title For Millennials, Out-of-Wedlock Childbirth Is the Norm. The Census data unfortunately doesn’t tell us the illegitimacy rate by age bracket (just the births per 1,000 unmarried women), so we can’t tell exactly what is going on here. Still, younger women swamp older women in the total number of births, so while something may well have changed for Millennials, I wonder if it isn’t being oversold. I suspect that much of what is attributed to a “new generation” is really a reflection of changing racial demographics. Hispanic women have the highest fertility rates and we have an increasing number of young Hispanic women. If that is what is driving the change, claiming a new generation thinks differently could be true but is also very misleading.

Could this be showing the progress of the ‘opportunity bubble’ to have OOW children moving along over time?

In other words. the cohort of women over 35 can still find men to father children (either willingly or not), but for younger cohorts of women, this is proving increasingly difficult.

Purely speculation, but I suspect some combination of the following:

1) Younger unmarried men who have even moderate income are more careful to avoid impregnating a woman than previous generations, due to a growing understanding and dislike of the child support system.
2) Fewer unmarried younger men have the kinds of earnings which would make them an attractive target for an oops pregnancy. There is data to back this up, however the bigger difference for unmarried men regarding earnings is in the older age brackets.
3) Unmarried young women are hesitant to have children during difficult times. This would fit with the pattern where out of wedlock birth rates decline slightly, and those births which are out of wedlock shifted to cohabiting couples. This looks like a shift towards a more secure family structure with the father in the home.
4) Unmarried older women are not as fazed as young women about the risky economy/times and slim pickings for careless men with jobs, because they lack the ability to postpone childbirth.
5) Older women who in the past would have married and had children in wedlock find themselves less able to marry (per the data I’ve shared separately), and therefore decide to have their children out of wedlock instead (ties in with #4).

4) Unmarried older women are not as phased as young women about the risky economy/times and slim pickings for careless men with jobs, because they lack the ability to postpone childbirth.

They ALL hear their biological clock. They just get p*ssed off that men don’t line up to marry them on THEIR schedule (their 30th birthday.) All never married women basically want a husband on their 30th birthday (gives them just enough time to crank out their 2 or 3 kids.) Alas, it never works out that way….. and that is man’s fault never her’s.

One woman I knew from a social group I was part of before I was married (I was 29 at the time, she was 38) wanted a baby. She WAS going to have one, come hell or highwater. It was only after I got married that I found out that this woman (an attorney, now in her early 40s) had one. She went to the sperm bank and was artificially inseminated. And she had a kid at age 42 and sure enough, this kid was full blown Down’s Syndrome. Very sad. But even after her entirely selfish act of playing “goddess” she still felt vindicated in doing what she did because no man ever “stepped up” and asked her to get married. She very much wanted to BE married but was never in life proposed to…. (Her problem is Dalrock, she was fat and ugly.)

Hollywood has been “mainstreaming” this selfish I-want-to-be-a-mommy-right-now behavior of single professional women, for decades. Remember the movie “The Big Chill”? Without googling I think that was 1982, Kevin Costner’s debut film as a “corpse.” He commits suicide and all these friends from the University of Michigan get together for his funeral, they all stay at one big house in South Carolina all weekend. Well one such U-M undergrad was a single attorney (now in her late 30s.) She wanted a baby. And she told Glenn Close (that weekend) that she had every intension of getting pregnant that weekend with one of those housemates. She WOULD be having a baby. As it turns out Glenn Close (Biblically) offered up her own husband Kevin Kline to have s-x with this woman the way Sarah asked her own husband Abraham to have s-x with Hagar. And this was seen as right and good and MORAL! Afterall, its not her fault that no man ever stepped up to marry her.

LauraHere in the rural South, young couples with modest incomes often CHOOSE to have children OOW in order that EACH can claim one of the children as a dependent, thus enabling BOTH of them to file taxes as Head of Household and get the lowest possible tax rate.

Not sure how that works out, since each child is almost certain to have a Social Security Number that was issued days after birth in any hospital, and Federal tax law has required an SSN to back up the child credit since the 1987 tax reform, in order to counter divorced people doing that exact thing.

The Danish study has made the rounds, and in the Nordics in general it appears (no footnote) that cohabiting couples who used to get married once the woman was pregnant with the first child are now putting it off until the second child. This fits in with the whole “marriage as capstone” mindset, perhaps, where marriage is the last milestone to adulthood, after everything else is done.

Where I come from, child support is anywhere from 10% to 30% of a man’s income, depending on a variety of factors (including $900+/month dollars mothers sometimes pay for daycare and number of kids). Women aren’t exactly becoming rich off of child support. Some (including one of my relatives) game the system and can be quite cruel to former husbands, but most women also work and make enough money each year. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the fallout from a nasty divorce (and the resulting loss of men who don’t want to support a woman with children) would be a strong disincentive to divorce, even for a substantial income boost.

Most folks in church would question this simply because the “deadbeat dad” is actually quite common among the very poor sections of the population and would be more common if there was no child support. Many churches even have programs for supporting single mothers. How is this factor more important than the breakdown of marriage in general, which explains why childless couples divorce as well?

Given the increase in college degrees this shouldn’t be surprising (given the low rate of out of wedlock births to degreed females), of course the corollary is that college educated women are the most likely to remain childless (1/4).

My first thought regarding this data is that it correlates with your earlier (last year) post on the divorce rate levelling off. This would mean that women perceive times as too uncertain to change their status quo: they aren’t secure enough to expel their man due to the economy, and they don’t want a child for the same reason.
Perhaps though, this may be a result of men waking up to the game. Perhaps the case is that the MRA / MGTOW message is getting out, so it is MEN who are being far more cautious in their dealings with women, especially when it comes to contraception. Thus, the figures indicate that all but the most stupid men are allowing women or trusting women with contraception.
Meanwhile over in the feminist utopia, the UN has warned that the country will hit the wall:

Consider this: Sweden was #15 in world economic rankings in 2010. It has slid to #25 IN 5 YEARS and will slide to #45 by 2030, being overtaken by Mexico, Cuba and Bulgaria. One factor in this decline is Muslim migration, with a vast number of men who are unsuited to being in a modern economy. The other is the “Strong Independent Swedish Woman” who has divorced her husband and lives with her children, having been given all of the rights privileges and demands Swedish feminists have asked for.

I wonder if the rising obesity rate has an effect on out of wedlock births. I would think that unmarried obese women would have fewer opportunities to get pregnant.

Unlimited money can easily destroy even the wealthiest cities in the world. Detroit a several decades ago had the highest per capita income of any city in the world. Today, Detroit is a social wasteland. The natural break of the social destruction that is ripping through the western democracies will be the limited money supply to fund poor decisions. I would expect a slow down at some point. However, there is a lot of inertia in the system.

Their demographics are not good. Sweden is always hailed by American Feminists as the model nation of gender equality; which is laughable; since they are also the model for extinction and Muslin takeover. Muslims may be 40% of the populace of Sweden by 2030.

The 13th warrior will become the 9th through 13th warriors. The damage is already done and their population decline is irreversible.

Whenever I see the word “unintended” applied to a pregnancy when women have access to virtually 100% effective contraception that you can’t tell whether they’re using it or not, I only read, “she’s a liar”. Your stats tell me that women have learned that it’s ok to lie to someone as long as he’s paying your rent.

And to emphasize the point, we’re expected to believe that after something like half of the non-marital pregnancies are aborted, 57% of non-marital BIRTHS are “unintended”. Women are either pathological liars, or they are dumber than rocks.

I have see plenty of tattooed obese women walking their blue pill dogs into strip malls. There is no lack of thirty fools willing to wear that choke collar.

Feminism is all about ‘fat acceptance’ and making sure every woman has a chance at optimization.Torture yourself with watching the TV Show “Say Yes to the Dress”. Every other bride seems to be very overweight; that show is a bucket of cold water for young men about marriage.

I agree there is an economic slowdown coming for sure. Friedman has a great article on the subject.

@TFHThose men apparently don’t know that the most onerous of laws, ‘childimony’ is not dependent on marriage, but rather on having a kid. An unmarried man who is the father already has the worst Sword of Damocles over him, married or not.

You’re leaving out the whole thing about “divide the assets.” In most states it should really be called “divide the balance sheet” because it includes not only the assets but the liabilities. Student loans are part of this and if assigned to the man as part of a divorce settlement it’s as if he took them out. He can’t bankrupt to make them go away and the interest keeps piling up. She, on the other hand, gets half (or more) of his assets and cuts her debt load in half along with getting the children over 90% of the time. Cohabitating with a tight cohabitation contract is a far better way to go in this legal environment.

I know a guy who did something like this. He refused to get married because he’d seen what his mom did to his dad. He went to technical school instead of college and he makes good money as a certified elevator technician installing them and repairing them. He fell in love, but he refused to get married. They compromised on living together so he moved her into his house and she promptly cranked out two kids. He paid the co-pay on her insurance (thousands) After living together for about seven years she decided to move on, thinking she’d get a fat check every month.

1. He was happy with the arrangement and didn’t want it to end.
2. He believes firmly that kids should be raised by both their biological parents in the same home.
3. He decided to fight for the kids, figuring that he got custody he’d be able to work it out with her from a position of strength.

He hired a really good attorney and got custody of the kids. After he got custody of their two children he made her an offer: get out, go get a job and pay your child support and see your kids at visitation. Or, you can stay where you are, continue what we’ve been doing but as my employee: a live-in housekeeper and maid. She took door #2.

He had his attorney draw up an employment contract with her as a live-in housekeeper/nanny and the contract had an at-will termination clause. Meaning- as long as she toed the line she got to live there, had access to the children every day and even had some say in the way they were being raised; but he always had the option of firing her and out she goes. If she called the cops on some kind of DV charge, he could fire her on the spot and he wouldn’t be locked out of his house (he said he had his attorney explain that to her). If he even suspects she’s screwing around, she’s out of there. He provided room and board, paid her a salary and deducted her child support obligation out of the check, which he used to pay her employment taxes (probably not strictly legal, but nobody is required to keep records of how child support is used). She wound up with about a $100 weekly allowance. They never stopped sharing a bed but the contract doesn’t mention sex anywhere and she has her own bedroom if she wants it.

No threatpoint because they were never married, so no divorce and no cash and prizes on the way out and he’s the custodial parent. Total role reversal except that he’s a man and believes that children need to be raised by both mother and father working together in the same home. She, being a woman, tried to turn her children into a single parent family with a paycheck dad.

When she realized the only leverage she had was sex, she tried to play the sex-card and .cut him off and started sleeping in her bedroom. He didn’t complain, just said “OK.” So, a week later he stopped by the house to change clothes before going out for the evening. With him was a younger, more attractive woman. He introduced baby-mama to his date as the housekeeper. He said when he got home later that night she was back in his bed, sobbing. He gave her some comfort and explained she was not in any way required to have sex with him and she was free to say no. But either she met his needs as he wanted them met or somebody else would and she’d simply be the housekeeper. If the new one was really compatible, he might just move the new one into the house. If that caused problems he’d fire her and she was out of there. Last time I talked to him he said he had a very well-run, peaceful household and she was down for SOD. Women respond to incentives.

He’s the only man I’ve ever known and one of the very, very few men I’ve ever heard about who was able to flip the script and get into a position of power. He still loves her and she knows that, but she also knows that after threatening to leave and forcing him to hire an attorney to get custody of the kids, she’s already on her second chance and there won’t be a third. Reading between the lines she’s now more attracted to him than at first and she now actively tries to please him.

Had they followed the traditional script and gotten married he’d have been screwed.

Sometimes I wonder if some women see lying as lying at all. I have listened to some women make up stories which are not anywhere near the truth, to support their positions, even when lying is unnecessary. And when you tell them that what they just said was untrue, they don’t even bother to argue with you; they simply move on to another topic.

Dave, I think you must have known my ex-wife. I had described this phenomenon to my attorney in the divorce she filed for; then at a mediation he saw it first hand — she made some complaint, he jumped in and said she knew that wasn’t true because she’d made that complaint before and he’d seen my email responding to it (with facts), and on cue she ignored what he said and changed the subject. My attorney was shaking his head as we discussed this after the mediation (which failed, of course). This is a woman who is an outspoken fundamentalist Christian and who holds herself out as the moral one in our marriage and divorce. The lying has continued now for 3+ years post-divorce as she has repeatedly sought child support she’s not entitled to. The extraneous charges she lobs out of the blue are unbelievable, except that I really should expect them by now. My theory has been that she rationalizes that I’m a monster (in her mind) so she has no obligation to tell me the truth or to tell others the truth about me. Somehow there’s no such thing as a lie to me or about me.

Dave, every woman I have been involved with has cheated, moving on to the next guy prior to breaking things off with me. Every one of them would insist that she has never cheated in any relationship. And every one of them believes that it’s true. They will reinterpret their own memories of events such that things were over with the first guy long before they actually started with the second. Even if they have to resort to privileging their own misremembered feelings over objective reality, this is not a problem. This is how they “fall out of love” so easily. By the time they’re done falling out of love with you, they had hated you right from the beginning.

The unmarried couple has two children. Each parent claims one of the children.

Ah. Not sure how that plays out in terms of tax, really. Seems elaborate.
===========================================================================
“Instead, the IRS stipulated conditions for claiming the deduction. For example, from 2009 and forward, the custodial parent is the one with whom the child resides the greater number of nights during the year, regardless of the terms of the divorce decree. If the number of nights spent with each parent is equal, then the parent with the higher adjusted gross income is considered to be the residential or custodial parent.”

In my case, my son spends more than 183 nights a year at my house, usually when every other week is still too much time immersed in estrogen, so I claim him as a dependant on my taxes and file as head of household. The girls live slightly more than six months every year with their mother, so she can claim them as dependants and file as head of household.

@David J This is a woman who is an outspoken fundamentalist Christian and who holds herself out as the moral one in our marriage and divorce.

This is the key, right here. It seems to me that secular marriages often end on a much more amicable note than christian marriages. Her problem is she knows what she did was wrong, she knows she’s damaging her children, but she wants what she wants. So, in order to be righteous, you have to be a monster. Trust me, it won’t stop. No matter what you do, it won’t stop.

Document everything. One day your children will want to know the truth.

My theory has been that she rationalizes that I’m a monster (in her mind) so she has no obligation to tell me the truth or to tell others the truth about me. Somehow there’s no such thing as a lie to me or about me.

NO! It isn’t about you, it’s about her guilt and projection. She has to see you as a monster because she thinks that makes her the better one and thus justifies her evil behavior. Whatever she’s accusing you of is probably stuff she’s done, is doing, or is thinking about.

@Artisanal Toad: Your comment at 1:56 a.m. makes sense to me. There is a lot of projection going on. She lies to me and has for years, I don’t lie to her, but she accuses me of being a liar; etc. Another example I noted during the divorce litigation: she constantly accused me of being controlling, but she was the one who kept imposing all kinds of rules about how and when I could come to her place, wouldn’t give our son the key to her place even though it was inconvenient for everyone, and countless other manifestations. She claimed that I was a bad parent, but she was the one who took our son to the police station for a talking to after he pitched a fairly typical 14-year old tantrum, resulting in his running away and remaining estranged from her ever since. She accuses me of attempting to poison our kids against her when I have studiously avoided doing so even indirectly, while I know for a fact that she has repeatedly and explicitly attempted to poison them against me, including by talking to our oldest two sons about her divorce filing and her reasons for it 3 weeks before she told me, directly contrary to her repeated pledge to me and to our counselors that if it ever came to that we’d talk to the kids together about it. And on and on. But God is just, and I wouldn’t want to be her when the justice comes.

Dating/Marrying Someone (“My problem is her past. She is not a virgin but has only been with one guy and she highly regrets this decision.”)

Reading that…the kid gets the bigger red flags.

‘The more alarming part is she used to cut herself and has some family problems as her parents are divorced along with some other things. She is not Catholic but still believes in God and goes to church when she can.’

Do not pass Go, do not let her collect 200 dollars.

Plus it seems most of the responses reflect this. Especially the one telling him she’s toying with him and that this is only an Internet thing.

“Most young people choose to establish themselves and have their first child before they tie the knot “

This is what I have seen among relatives in Europe as well. The life script is: sex –> if good, then relationship –> if good, then shack up –> if good, then kid –> if all good so far, then marry. Marriage is *last* in the list, after everything else is set up including family.

I don’t see this happening in the US anytime soon, because our cohabitation culture is different — much, much more fragile here. The UMC/UMC+ will still continue the current script of college –> grad degree –> establish career –> marry around 30 –> kids, I think, rather than inverting it like the Euros have done, because cohabs here are not generally durable like they are in Europe. That may change, but it doesn’t seem likely, given the overall brittleness and fragility of our culture, and the hallmark of atomization that it bears.

Where I come from, child support is anywhere from 10% to 30% of a man’s income, depending on a variety of factors (including $900+/month dollars mothers sometimes pay for daycare and number of kids). Women aren’t exactly becoming rich off of child support. Some (including one of my relatives) game the system and can be quite cruel to former husbands, but most women also work and make enough money each year. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the fallout from a nasty divorce (and the resulting loss of men who don’t want to support a woman with children) would be a strong disincentive to divorce, even for a substantial income boost.

Most folks in church would question this simply because the “deadbeat dad” is actually quite common among the very poor sections of the population and would be more common if there was no child support. Many churches even have programs for supporting single mothers. How is this factor more important than the breakdown of marriage in general, which explains why childless couples divorce as well?

First, 10-30% is a lot. It’s basically an additional tax, because it is calculated as a percentage of income, and is not deductible. It’s a tax, from the economic point of view. Don’t think a 10-30% tax hike is a big deal, or that 10-30% of someone else’s income to you tax free (which CS is) is not an attractive incentive?

Second, the core issue is that exiting marriages becomes more palatable if the woman can get the kids and the financial support for them without being married. It’s not that women are “getting rich” from child support, but rather that women can exit a marriage they no longer want to be in, and get to retain the financial support for their nest that they had during the marriage to a significant degree. This may be appropriate in cases where the husband engages in substantial misbehavior (the big ‘As’ of abuse, addiction, adultery), but if it’s the normal divorce where the wife gets bored, loses attraction, wants to find herself, etc? In those, common, cases, the child support system creates a huge “moral hazard” for women, because it enables them to indulge their boredom and still retain much of the financial benefit of marriage. It creates perverse incentives in that way. It isn’t that she gets rich from CS. It’s that she gets the financial support for her kids, whether she ditches you or not — even if she ditches you for no good reason, or, to take an also not uncommon example, she cheats on you and leaves you for another man — together with your kids, and your financial support. That is plain and simple FUCKED UP in terms of incentives.

Guys like you need to wake up. The system is jacked. Yes, the “breakdown of marriage” is a core issue, but you have to understand that incentives matter — and married women with children are incentivized to divorce more with the current “No Fault + CS” system than otherwise, for rather obvious and straightforward reasons.

Sometimes I wonder if some women see lying as lying at all. I have listened to some women make up stories which are not anywhere near the truth, to support their positions, even when lying is unnecessary. And when you tell them that what they just said was untrue, they don’t even bother to argue with you; they simply move on to another topic.

What needs to be understood is that for many women, what they feel in the moment *is* the truth. There are women who are very rational and are not like that, but in this culture in particular, which is indulgent of the feminine thought process, many women can recognize that something may not be factually true, but nevertheless is “emotionally true”, and the latter has much more currency and meaning to them. Again, as I say, NAWALT, but in our culture MWALT. When you are having that type of conversations with women, you need to recognize that they are prioritizing feelings/emotional truth when they are talking — the rational/factual truth is both less interesting and less relevant to them (and, personally for them, “less true”). With most women, emotions and thought run constantly together, and they have a hard time separating them (or don’t feel good when they do).

“for many women, what they feel in the moment *is* the truth. There are women who are very rational and are not like that, but in this culture in particular, which is indulgent of the feminine thought process, many women can recognize that something may not be factually true, but nevertheless is “emotionally true”, and the latter has much more currency and meaning to them.”

This is a really important thing for men to understand.

I’ve also noticed that women, especially professional women, are getting a little better at compartmentalizing their work lives from every other part of life. I know women who can be quite coldly rational at work, where that function is crucial to business; yet can whipsaw back to emotional thought processing in every other aspect of life.

But most women run emotions and thought together all the time, and cannot be (or at least aren’t) coldly rational even when necessary. So that emotional/logical confluence and parallel is a common feature of women everywhere, including at work.

How prescient that Sweden gets mentioned as I was writing about it to one of my correspondents only a day or so back, when I opined that Sweden’s self-immolation (courtesy of, first Feminism and then Islam) was surely a case of the Good Lord truly working in mysterious ways. America may have its problems but they are nothing compared to those of Sverige; that the worst, the absolutely worst, cuckolding-entitled-bitch of a duplicitous girlfriend I ever had was Swedish may have something to do with my contempt for the place, but not entirely, for even at the time I thought the Swedish males gave the impression that they had all volunteered for castration.

..and this from the country that gave you Vikings and later was a leading European Empire.

novaseeker The life script is: sex –> if good, then relationship –> if good, then shack up –> if good, then kid –> if all good so far, then marry. Marriage is *last* in the list, after everything else is set up including family.

This is fairly well documented in Northern Europe (especially the Nordics), although there appears to be some slipping of dates; nowadays marriage seems to come after the second child. It’s always good to get some eyeball type confirmation of studies.

I don’t see this happening in the US anytime soon, because our cohabitation culture is different — much, much more fragile here. The UMC/UMC+ will still continue the current script of college –> grad degree –> establish career –> marry around 30 –> kids, I think, rather than inverting it like the Euros have done, because cohabs here are not generally durable like they are in Europe.

The cohab culture seems to be not just college students but working people as well, in both the US and Europe. Perhaps it’s just that even now, Americans tend to move around more than Europeans, that alone could make cohabing more fragile. But isn’t there a class issue as well? Is the European equivalent of the US UMC really engaging in cohabitation long enough to have a child and then marrying? Or is that pattern more seen among the skilled labor group, with the Euro UMC basically following a similar pattern to that of the US?

thedeti I know women who can be quite coldly rational at work, where that function is crucial to business; yet can whipsaw back to emotional thought processing in every other aspect of life.

I’ve seen this as well and sometimes wonder if such women don’t overdo the drama away from work, perhaps as a way to compensate.

“thedeti
I know women who can be quite coldly rational at work, where that function is crucial to business; yet can whipsaw back to emotional thought processing in every other aspect of life.

I’ve seen this as well and sometimes wonder if such women don’t overdo the drama away from work, perhaps as a way to compensate.”

Yes, I think they do over compensate. It goes to the “I’m expected to be everything” argument. You know, when women say things like “The societal expectation is that women have to be ‘hard’ enough to be taken seriously, but ‘soft’ enough to be likable. I gotta do it all.” Since March is International Women’s Month, I’ve heard this a lot more lately. These statements are followed by something along the lines of “The fact that we are still having this conversation in 2015 is disturbing” and then thunderous applause. I listen and think “the only reason we are still having this conversation is because it is not a conversation, it’s just you complaining for forty years. No solutions have been presented and no discussion about who exactly ‘society’ is that is placing all these expectations on you.” I think if women who say that took a hard, honest look in the mirror they would find they saw the enemy and they are us.

Where I come from, child support is anywhere from 10% to 30% of a man’s income, depending on a variety of factors (including $900+/month dollars mothers sometimes pay for daycare and number of kids). Women aren’t exactly becoming rich off of child support. Some (including one of my relatives) game the system and can be quite cruel to former husbands, but most women also work and make enough money each year. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the fallout from a nasty divorce (and the resulting loss of men who don’t want to support a woman with children) would be a strong disincentive to divorce, even for a substantial income boost.

I’ve seen similar breakdowns for drug dealers, armed robbers, etc. Crime and treachery don’t always pay that well, but this isn’t proof that financial gains aren’t an incentive. It is merely proof that the people responding to the lure of ill gotten gains haven’t always thought the whole thing through. Look at any form of women’s entertainment, and fantasizing about divorce will be a staple. Whether the incentive is purely financial, or an expectation of trading up to a better husband, the goal is to profit by not keeping their vows. There are of course men who hope to profit by not keeping their vows, but it isn’t a worldwide obsession like it is for women.

It’s always interesting to note when I disagree with TFH, as I consider him among the clearest thinkers around these parts.

So while ‘no-fault’ asset division is bad, it is not nearly as evil as the CS horror (although it is cumulative to it and compounds total misery).

Laws differ from place to place, but in my area, child support is a minor annoyance compared to permanent maintenance and property settlement in divorce.

I live in an American state where child support is based upon one’s income. There’s a worksheet and a formula, and very little discretion for judges or other meddlers to change the amount a divorced parent (father in almost every case) pays.

In contrast, the judge has no limits on his behavior when considering maintenance/alimony. One really has to go down and sit through some of these ridiculous divorce proceedings to see the full extent of the arrogance, when some faggot judge effectively confiscates every last penny a man has, and gives it over to a fully capable adult, who is able to work but doesn’t want to. No pretense of supporting innocent and helpless children is attached to this theft. It’s simple, naked parasitism.

Furthermore, child support ends when the child reaches adulthood, and the grifting divorcée is forced to finally shift for herself. No such limitation exists for maintenance, which often goes on for ever and ever, until death.

I know many men who are compelled to pay child support, and while I’m sure it’s a pain, it’s possible to have a decent life through the ordeal. I know a couple of men who have felt the full brunt of the divorce apparatus. These men are effectively ruined, for life. Imagine a guy who is in his forties, at the peak of his profession, who lives with his elderly parents, to get the idea. It’s tragic lunacy, and the best possible reason never to get married, ever.

But, emotions and thought running together is the default setting for women. I think it takes effort for most women to separate out cold rationality from emotion.

Most fail at it –and always will– because women are simply not biologically hardwired to function that way. Those women who can compartmentalize in such a manner are the aberrations, much like the handful of adult men who never mature emotionally beyond the pre-adolescent stage and who are governed by emotion and impulse (and thus unable to effectively function as men in the adult world).

@Boxer – I live in an American state where child support is based upon one’s income. There’s a worksheet and a formula, and very little discretion for judges or other meddlers to change the amount a divorced parent (father in almost every case) pays.

Same thing where I live. AND, the maintenance/alimony amount was counted toward her as income and subtracted from my income when calculating CS. Add to that our shared parenting time and my CS was a minor annoyance, hardly a car payment.

The cohab culture seems to be not just college students but working people as well, in both the US and Europe. Perhaps it’s just that even now, Americans tend to move around more than Europeans, that alone could make cohabing more fragile. But isn’t there a class issue as well? Is the European equivalent of the US UMC really engaging in cohabitation long enough to have a child and then marrying? Or is that pattern more seen among the skilled labor group, with the Euro UMC basically following a similar pattern to that of the US?

In part that is happening. Most of the UC Euros I know professionally, if they have kids, they are married. I don’t know any straight Euro professionals who are parents and not married to the other parent. But, below that, cohab is the norm. I also think you are right that in the US people are just more mobile, but it’s also that the culture in general is more individualist/atomized. We are all in this for ourselves, in the US. There isn’t much of anything left for a collective good (considered a hostile concept by both political “teams” depending on the context of what the “good” in question is), and the social structure and mores are overwhelmingly tilted towards individualism. That isn’t the case in Europe, and I think it is what makes our cohabs less durable, in addition to class and geographic mobility trends.

I live in an American state where child support is based upon one’s income. There’s a worksheet and a formula, and very little discretion for judges or other meddlers to change the amount a divorced parent (father in almost every case) pays.

Right, but Boxer, it’s a tax. If you study the formulas and apply them, you’ll see that in most cases it is a flat tax on the non-custodial income, between 10 and 30 percent, depending on your income. That’s just a HUGE wealth transfer from men to women (in almost all cases it works that way). A 10 to 30 percent tax, which is then handed to someone else as income that isn’t taxed, is HUGE. Most couples don’t have substantial assets, but almost every divorced husband will be made to pay 10-30% of his income to his ex-wife. It’s alimony by another name. It bears no resemblance to the cost of the child, and in fact if/when mom comes into other income (increased income herself, marries someone), the guy *still* pays the same kid tax on his income.

Essentially what this means is that if a woman has a child, she has a tax claim on your income until the child is “of age” (which means different things in different states and is a moving target … and the trend is “moving on up” like George Jefferson).

Child support is not a minor thing. It’s a major wealth transfer from men to women that is a disguised tax. Given the way it is calculated in practice (yes, there are terms like “income shares” and tables and so on that prove a useful ruse for most, when if you actually use the tables and do the math you’ll see it’s more or less a flat tax on income), it’s nothing more than a disguised tax. But unlike other taxes, you can’t complain about it, because if you do, you’re a deadbeat.

Same thing where I live. AND, the maintenance/alimony amount was counted toward her as income and subtracted from my income when calculating CS. Add to that our shared parenting time and my CS was a minor annoyance, hardly a car payment.

Well, I don’t pay alimony, but don’t have shared parenting, and my CS is ~2100 per month for one kid.

Well, I don’t pay alimony, but don’t have shared parenting, and my CS is ~2100 per month for one kid.

Pretty expensive car, huh?

That is terrible Nova, I am so sorry. And although it has not happened to me personally, I do know how it feels. My brother in-law has an income of $12K a month. Great money. His wife frivorced him so she could live with the man she is now f-cking and keep her pride. Her combined alimony and child support is $6K a month, half his earnings. His youngest is 16, almost 17. I told him the day she turns 18 go right back to court and get that monthly support payment lower. This woman has a master’s degree but for some reason she just can’t work. So basically he pays her money so she can lounge around all day and f-ck her lover. That is basically her life, and I think she loves it.

If your marriage had remained intact, you would not be actually spending $2100 each and every month to feed, house, clothe, educate, insure, and provide medical care to that kid. No one does.

I live in flyover country. My total expenses to support a family of four are around $4700/month. That’s everything, including credit card payments. For four people. The actual, real cost of food, clothing, housing, schooling, insurance, and medicine for one of those children, averaged out over a year, is actually about $1000/month.

And I bet it isn’t just CS either. A lot of high earning men who get frivorced are ordered to carry insurance on the kid, over and above CS. A lot of dads are required to carry the kid as an insured on his health insurance.

When kid becomes a licensed driver, Dad is required to pay for the car insurance. (and for a teen male driver still in HS, the premiums are out of this world.)

Yes, I have to carry health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, college fund, etc. The issue is that the rate is calculated on pre-tax income, while of course it is taken from your post-tax income, which effectively makes it a second tax. And it’s ~2100 per month tax free to mom. Of course it exceeds the cost, that’s the point of CS to begin with — it isn’t about kids, it’s about transfer payments from mom to dad in an era where alimony was being phased out in many places. And it’s worse than alimony because you can’t deduct it (it is after tax) and it isn’t taxed by her (as alimony is). CS is ass rape, under the current system, full stop. But don’t complain — if you do, you’re a deadbeat, shitty father with bar priorities who hates kids and is bitter.

I’m sorry to hear about your situation. If you read my response, you’ll note I prefaced everything with: “Laws differ from place to place”.

Child support is not a minor thing. It’s a major wealth transfer from men to women that is a disguised tax. Given the way it is calculated in practice (yes, there are terms like “income shares” and tables and so on that prove a useful ruse for most, when if you actually use the tables and do the math you’ll see it’s more or less a flat tax on income), it’s nothing more than a disguised tax. But unlike other taxes, you can’t complain about it, because if you do, you’re a deadbeat.

While I’m sure that’s not pleasant, it will end someday. Consider the dude with your income who gets hammered with a divorce after a “medium term marriage” in my area. He pays the 2100 atop whatever they think poor princess deserves (you can bet they will be just as generous as possible with your money, too), and while the 2100/month will eventually stop being billed, the bulk of the payments never will (until you’re dead). Naturally, your aggrieved wife will also get most or all of your savings, your house, and the good car (you’ll be expected to keep making payments on this, naturally).

I know a guy who lives in his parents house and eats food they provide out of their pensions. He’s older than I am, has worked hard his whole life, has nothing to show for it.

I’ve got three kids and shared parenting time and mine was under $400 not counting what I spent on life insurance and health insurance. Of course, at the time maintenance was $2500/mo. Now that the maintenance is over, the CS is $1500/mo.

It’s probably more useful generally to look at the total bill. I figure I’m out somewhere in the neighborhood of $250K in six years.

Just to make one generalized point about this whole issue: I’d say the one thing that explains most of the kind of female behavior discussed in these threads is that women are normally motivated by a mixture of resentment and bitterness. It affects their thinking all the time.

First of all, it’s common for her to feel wronged by being born a woman. In her mind it’s just so unfair, because “men have it better” in society. And those privileged dipshits don’t even recognize that! She resents everything about herself – the fact that she can get pregnant, that she can not get pregnant after she’s middle-aged, that she bleeds every month, that society holds her to “impossible” standard, whatever those are etc. Again, in her mind, she’s “wronged” all the time, so she thinks men owe her.

She’s free to get a job, buy stuff for herself, have sex in any way she wants, use reliable contraception and abort her fetus. All this is unprecedented in human history. But in her mind, all this is actually a disadvantage. Why? Because it means asshole men will use her! They won’t have to fear the shotgun wedding! They won’t have to, you know, give her money and stuff! It’s just so unfair! She’s expected to have a job and be independent, to not have unwanted children. In her mind, it’s all a terrible burden, another case of society victimizing her just because she was born without a penis.

She resents being single, and then she resents being married. She was, of course, happy to get married, but then she starts to think she could’ve done better. That’s the one defining assumption that’s on her mind all the time: “I could’ve done better; I was duped and wronged”. She thinks she has done a great act of sacrifice and service by getting married. “That fucking wanker would be a miserable, alcoholic loser living in some cottage masturbating to porn if I didn’t marry him!” She thinks her husband is just a dipshit who’s basically using her for free. “I’m expected to have sex with this loser, to cook his meals and wash his clothes! Grrr!”

So she gets pregnant. In her mind, she’s being “paid” for her sacrifice. Her husband did as he was supposed to. Otherwise she’d feel like some sort of unpaid prostitute and servant getting used by some beta loser for “unearned” sex. But then, of course, she regrets it all, and resents her life. “My body is now ruined!” And then comes the last straw: she actually realizes she’s married to a beta. Oh no – he’s a loser! She was duped by him! He shot his lousy beta sperm into her, and now she’s raising his offspring! Her uterus was misused! In her mind, that’s the worst tragedy that could happen in the universe. Someone will have to pay for all of this, and it sure as Hell isn’t going to be her.

And people are surprised when women blow up their marriages, abuse their children, or shack up with some alpha thug who abuses her children? The force behind it is always the same: feral, mindless hatred, resentment, destructiveness and barbarity.

It’s probably more useful generally to look at the total bill. I figure I’m out somewhere in the neighborhood of $250K in six years.

Yes, that’s the best way to look at it. ~1500 is not bad for three kids, although in most states the additional amount per kid is not that much (it isn’t linear as in X amount per kid, it’s a base amount of X then plus Y per kid).

And, some states do things differently. I’ve talked with friends from other states where the CS is insane, but there was basically no alimony/maintenance.

Yes, which is why it’s fair to say that in at least some states it’s disguised alimony — that is, lower or eliminate alimony and jack up CS so she gets the same in the end but it’s more “defensible” because it’s “for the children”, even though she can spend it as she likes.

Any way it’s looked at, the system is crummy and broken. Dalrock is quite right to keep pounding on it.

In addition to the comments by Novaseeker about the oppression of CS, note that ‘adulthood’ for the end of CS is not age 18. It is often age 21 or 22, and now going on age 26.

I’m not aware of any American state or Canadian province which mandates child support until age 26. Do you have a source for this?

You guys seem to be concluding that I like the child support regime, or that I think it’s a good thing. In fact, in my area, it’s negligible compared to the overall costs of divorce. Again, a man can live a good life while paying child support. A man often can not live any sort of life paying maintenance in my state. It’s the difference between plugging numbers into a standard spreadsheet, and having some faggot judge look at your crying ex-wife and decide for himself how much you should be paying.

I don’t blame you for not believing me. I wouldn’t believe it either, except for the fact that I saw it in person. I’d recommend everyone be very skeptical, and go down to the ol’ courthouse on your next day off and sit through some of these proceedings. It’s quite the eye-opener.

I don’t doubt you. As I have often said in other contexts, “location matters”. The law and practice differs by state and by locality in a state, when it comes to family law. Where I live, it sucks balls, obviously, and this isn’t even a blue state. It varies a lot based on where you are.

So she gets pregnant. In her mind, she’s being “paid” for her sacrifice. Her husband did as he was supposed to. Otherwise she’d feel like some sort of unpaid prostitute and servant getting used by some beta loser for “unearned” sex. But then, of course, she regrets it all, and resents her life. “My body is now ruined!”

All of this could be fixed tomorrow with the concept of property and ownership. Women keep saying over and over that “…no man owns me!” But that is really what she wants. A woman wants to be “owned” by her husband because when she is, he is responsible, he could not possibly “ruin” her. Her body is his and then this concept of “unearned” s-x is not a concept. The concept of “unearned” s-x is only a concept when she is NOT his property, that he does NOT own her. Because if they are having s-x and he doesn’t own her then he is actually only renting her which turns her into an unpaid whore. This is what unilateral divorce law has down to women and their place as wives to their man.

The father gives away his “property” (the daughter) to his son-in-law and she becomes his “property.” Girls dream about this moment, even if they don’t fully understand what it means. But it is very clear, it involves ownership. If women didn’t want to be “owned” by a man, they wouldn’t fantasize about his dominance over her. 50 SoG should tell us all this.

And people are surprised when women blow up their marriages, abuse their children, or shack up with some alpha thug who abuses her children? The force behind it is always the same: feral, mindless hatred, resentment, destructiveness and barbarity.

There are mechanisms in place that are pushing that up to age 26. Here is a Google search of discussions of it :

Through college age is standard in many places (note:: not all places). 26 is becoming interesting now because of the ACA, which sets 26 as the age for parents being able to carry children on insurance under the ACA. It’s likely that, as a result of this, CS will creep towards 26 in many states over the course of time.

The feminist imperative will drive voters to drive their congressmen and state reps to push child support to 26 (where health insurance is) because moms who frivorced their husbands look at their sons and daughters (at age 23, 24, never having passed one class in college) living at home, not able to hold a job for more than 10 minutes because they have NO respect for authority, and they are going to expect to get money from their ex-husbands for this because…. well…. HE has to pay to support these young adults being they are so useless. Absent entirely from this line of feminist imperative thinking is he concept that these now fully grown delinquints are the way they are because they learned from mom that they didn’t have to respect anyone’s authority. The judge will just make them whole. That is how is worked for me. Why should they have to put up with anyone’s “…sh-t.”

It is a tragedy as to the demise of The British Empire. Was not Jack Cade complaining about this back in the Fourteenth Century (see Henry VI Part 2) but the recent loss of Calais thus ending our occupation of land on the continent of Europe is a bitter blow. We will however surely overcome our present troubles and seek pastures new; I think that we might have a go of creating thirteen new colonies in the new world, India might need our assistance in separating Hindu from Muslim and then we might found a new continent down-under. The possibilities are endless, but I don’t think we should call it an Empire, maybe something like Commonwealth would hide our hegemonic intentions.

I think it was especially hard on the Brits in the 1960s. The dialougue in “To Sir, With Love” between Sidney Potier and the headmaster of the school in East End London where Potier takes a teaching position after living as a British national in California, calmly explaining to the headmaster that perhaps it would be best for their beloved empire if they capitulated their desire for world’s policeman to the United States, was rivitting. All I can say is this…

….I’m sorry Opus that my country p-ssied out and let you fight the Krouts for 3 years without our help from 1914 to 1917….

…and I am doubly sorry Opus (perhaps even ten fold) that my country p-ssied out and let you fight the Krouts and that bugger Hitler for 27 months without our help from September 1st, 1939 to December 8th, 1941, ALL ALONE after Paris capitulated in 1940 I might add. I do believe THAT is what cost you (cost us all) the orderly conduct of a proper British empire.

Sidney Poitier is always wonderful but are not the lyrics of the theme song now somewhat inappropriate.

As to your kind words I feel compelled to point out that post WW1 the Empire grew and I thus suppose that the abandonment of Empire after WW2 was a matter of choice – and probably some post-Suez American pressure – rather than anything else. On a point of pedanticism you are two days out, as Prime Minister Chamberlain declared war on Germany on 3rd September not the 1st.

Politicians do not necessarily believe all they say or imply, even when they waive pieces of paper for the cameras. It has been argued that in the Munich agreement, Chamberlain gained an extra two or three years to secure British rearmament (Spitfires, Hurricanes; that sort of thing): we started the war, not Hitler; and following the Versailles Treaty of 1919 which treated Germany very shabbily it was surely predictable that sooner or later Germany would want to get its own territory back. The invasion of Poland was our excuse, and so, I invite you to look at a map of Europe and pin-point exactly where you think Prussia is situate.

The British position on Europe which we hoped we had sorted after 1815 at the Vienna Conference is that we want a balance of power therein to prevent either an over-dominant Germany or an over-dominant France. It is for that reason we are pro-EU even as we don’t much care to be part of it ourselves (hint: when you arrive in Britain you will be using Sterling and not Euros).

“He pays the 2100 atop whatever they think poor princess deserves (you can bet they will be just as generous as possible with your money, too), and while the 2100/month will eventually stop being billed, the bulk of the payments never will (until you’re dead). Naturally, your aggrieved wife will also get most or all of your savings, your house, and the good car (you’ll be expected to keep making payments on this, naturally).”

I remember reading something about this: How exactly are the family courts incentivized to maximize distribution from one spouse to another in a divorce (namely mens’ assets/income to women)? Do the state family courts receive matching funds from the federal government? Do the judges actually receive income based on the amounts transferred? How are the lawyers incentivized in the divorce process (just hourly fees and/or fees based on asset amounts)?

The out-of-wedlock birthrate is merely taking a break from its long rise. The long trend won’t be reversing anytime soon. None of the factors that cause it have disappeared. And no promotion of marriage and anti-feminism has happened in those years where it’s leveled off, nor will such a thing occur in the next few years.

The reason for this ~temporary~ leveling off is apparent in the first graph. The 2008 Financial Crisis took an axe to people’s incomes and thus the overall birth rate plummeted. However, because of women’s hypergamy (women marry up and snap up the highest earning single men), married couples were less affected by the economic crisis, and unmarried couples’ birth rates decreased far more than married couples’. An economic crisis coupled with women’s hypergamy caused this, not a sudden re-prioritization of marriage by cohabiting couples or a cultural shift to re-value marriage.

I expect the out-of-wedlock birth rate to resume its long rise in the next few years.

@Boxer –
Laws differ from place to place, but in my area, child support is a minor annoyance compared to permanent maintenance and property settlement in divorce.

In my state, it’s almost rational. Half the difference in incomes, based on ability to earn, for half the length of the marriage. And in my county, ability to earn means the average of the last 3 years if you’re employed, or an estimate based on education and experience if you’re not. From what lawyers have told me, there is wiggle room, but the magistrates are pretty fair, with the female magistrates actually cutting wives less slack. Spousal support is untaxed for the payer, and taxed as income on the payee.

As the joke goes, “Why is divorce so expensive? Because it’s worth it!”. Yeah, still bitter.